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Plays and Fragments
Menander (c. 341-291 BC) was the foremost innovator of Greek New Comedy, a dramatic style that moved away from the fantastical to focus upon the problems of ordinary Athenians. This collection contains the full text of 'Old Cantankerous' (Dyskolos), the only surviving complete example of New Comedy, as well as fragments from works including 'The Girl from Samos' and 'The Rape of the Locks', all of which are concerned with domestic catastrophes, the hazards of love and the trials of family life. Written in a poetic style regarded by the ancients as second only to Homer, these polished works - profoundly influential upon both Roman playwrights such as Plautus and Terence, and the wider Western tradition - may be regarded as the first true comedies of manners.
276 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 317
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Menander
137 books45 followersGreek: Μένανδρος
Menander (ca. 342–291 BC), the best-known representative of Athenian New Comedy, was the son of well-to-do parents; his father Diopeithes is identified by some with the Athenian general and governor of the Thracian Chersonese known from the speech of Demosthenes De Chersoneso. He presumably derived his taste for comic drama from his uncle Alexis.
Menander (ca. 342–291 BC), the best-known representative of Athenian New Comedy, was the son of well-to-do parents; his father Diopeithes is identified by some with the Athenian general and governor of the Thracian Chersonese known from the speech of Demosthenes De Chersoneso. He presumably derived his taste for comic drama from his uncle Alexis.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
January 25, 2024
One thing I’ve learned from Greek plays: if someone is ever abandoned as an infant to die, they are always discovered by some shepherd and reared and come back later with some unique object that proves their identity. And they come back just at the right time to upset someone’s plans. Oh and before their identity is revealed, they fall in love with their sister. Gets you every time. Luke and Leia syndrome. Doh!
Menander is the greater Ancient Greek playwright you’ve never heard of. He was very prolific at about 100 plays or more, was considered the greatest of the comedic playwrights, and is the most frequently quoted playwright of the ancient world.
These plays are characterized by comedic turns, misunderstandings, and deceptions, usually in a very domestic setting, usually set outside two neighboring houses. There’s a lot of neighborly relationships (good and bad), weddings, and the like.
Different bad actors are duly caricatured and mocked, they don’t get their way, everything ends happily, and a good time is had by all. Oftentimes the villain has a change of heart at the end.
The Bad Tempered Man
This was funny. It’s about an old curmudgeonly fellow who wants everyone to get off his lawn, like, overly, comedically so. Everyone makes fun of him, kind of like “are you seeing this?” And then the guy falls into a well and gets rescued (albeit not before people have some talk about whether they should just leave him down there; joking/not-joking/but-no-really…). They haul him out of the well and he has a change of heart, realizing that we need each other (cue kumbaya). It’s basically A Christmas Carol. Quite funny though.
The Girl from Samos
A man comes back from a long business trip to find out his son really wants to get married to his girlfriend, like, today... His son got the girl knocked up and she has had a baby. He tries to cover up the fact that they already had a baby and gets the servants to cover for him. The father has a (wife? Mistress?), Chrysis, who is from Samos…Samos was known for being a hotbed of prostitution. Chrysis got pregnant before her man left on this trip, and he had ordered her to lose the child. She miscarries, so problem solved. But then in order to cover for her step son having a child out of wedlock, she volunteers to take their child and take care of it. Her man thinks she disobeyed him but she claims that she just found the child in the wild.
So the son has his plan all in place…his stepmother is covering for him, so hopefully no one will find out that he got his girlfriend knocked up out of wedlock, so now if he can just convince his dad and father in law to let them get married right away, then the deed can be done before anyone is the wiser. (The girls father likewise starts off deceiver because he went on the long business trip with the boys father.)
Of course it backfires and they find out and it looks like all will be lost, but then there’s a reversal at the end and it ends happily.
None of this description conveys the comedic ways in which everything is delivered, but it is quite funny even in translation.
There are lots of well put saying as well; these plays are not as poetic as say Aeschylus, but there are lots of proverbial expressions that were coined by Menander and then quoted by others: in many ways he was a shaper of the culture.
There’s also a recurring theme throughout of these slaves getting put into terrible untenable situations, double binds through no fault of their own. I wonder if Menander was slyly pointing out how unfair and injust that slavery is? I’m not sure. But I get the feeling he may have been a forward thinker for his time.
The Arbitration
A man is cross with his wife because when he comes home, he finds out from a slave that she got pregnant while he was gone and then gave birth. He feels ill used by his wife, goes and sleeps at a neighbor’s house and hires a prostitute to hang out with him. Meanwhile, a shepherd discovers a child that was left in the wilderness to die, complete with a ring. That shepherd is apprehended by the servant of the aforementioned man, who recognizes his master’s ring. The servant brings the child and the ring back to his master’s house but is afraid to tell him. Finally, the prostitute puts it all together and gets the man to admit that he took advantage of a woman at a recent festival. The prostitute recognizes the woman—she is the man’s very wife. The two are reconciled. It’s basically the plot of the Piña Colada song.
The prostitute also gets a happy ending because she gets pursued by the man’s friend that he’s been staying with, and can finally stop having to resort to prostitution to get by. Very nice.
The Shield
A man goes off to war, hoping to come back with enough winnings so that his sister can have a good dowry. He goes with his faithful servant, but his servant comes back with a sad tale. He was separated from his master during a crucial battle. He found his masters bloated corpse with his shield next to it. He has come home with the shield alone, which his master spent so much time taking care of, but which failed to take care of him.
Of course, it’s revealed that his master didn’t actually die but got his gear mixed up with someone else, and because the corpses were swollen his servant couldn’t tell the difference.
His surprise return is instrumental in overturning the machinations of a dastardly neighbor Smikrenes (what a name) who wants to force a marriage upon a girl many years his junior just so he can get his greedy hands on that dowry. This would be particularly tragic since she was just about to marry a young man that she actually loves. Comedically, they trick Smikrenes into thinking that someone else has died and that his daughter (who has an even larger dowry) is up for grabs. At the end, both “dead” people are revealed to not be dead, the girl gets to marry who she pleases, and Smikrenes learns his lesson.
The rest of the plays have so many missing parts that the reconstructions of the plot are very speculative or not even possible.
Is this worth reading?
I think so. You get a completely different view of Greek life, you can learn a lot about comedy, learn what day to day normal life was like, and also I found Menander championing slaves and prostitutes and other people who society deems “lesser” to be refreshing.
The main thing I’m sad about is that we don’t have more complete plays by him, which really detracts from this being as good as it could, though obviously that’s not due to any fault of the translators or anyone else.
Notes on scholarship
Why have you never heard of Menander? Unlike the other great Greek playwrights he composed comedies, not tragedies, and this may be part of why he wasn’t held in as high regard—despite all of those quotations, he only won the title in the athenian drama festivals eight times out of those 100 plays. Nevertheless there is no denying his genius at composing comedic plots, at developing lively characters, and at crafting memorable lines. But you’ve never heard of him because unlike Sophocles or Euripides or Aeschylus, we don’t have a bunch of his surviving texts.
What we do have is one play that is almost complete and several plays that have large missing pieces and then tons of fragments and quotations. In recent years a lot more of his work has been discovered, and this text is the first time for much of the new discoveries to be captured in a solid translation and made accessible.
This book is organized helpfully, starting with the most complete plays and going from there with fragments at the end. I found the first few plays still pretty enjoyable because even when there are major pieces missing, the translator provides their best guess summary of what probably happened in that section based on inference, so the plot is still quite comprehensible. The fragments at the end are less interesting.
Menander is the greater Ancient Greek playwright you’ve never heard of. He was very prolific at about 100 plays or more, was considered the greatest of the comedic playwrights, and is the most frequently quoted playwright of the ancient world.
These plays are characterized by comedic turns, misunderstandings, and deceptions, usually in a very domestic setting, usually set outside two neighboring houses. There’s a lot of neighborly relationships (good and bad), weddings, and the like.
Different bad actors are duly caricatured and mocked, they don’t get their way, everything ends happily, and a good time is had by all. Oftentimes the villain has a change of heart at the end.
The Bad Tempered Man
This was funny. It’s about an old curmudgeonly fellow who wants everyone to get off his lawn, like, overly, comedically so. Everyone makes fun of him, kind of like “are you seeing this?” And then the guy falls into a well and gets rescued (albeit not before people have some talk about whether they should just leave him down there; joking/not-joking/but-no-really…). They haul him out of the well and he has a change of heart, realizing that we need each other (cue kumbaya). It’s basically A Christmas Carol. Quite funny though.
The Girl from Samos
A man comes back from a long business trip to find out his son really wants to get married to his girlfriend, like, today... His son got the girl knocked up and she has had a baby. He tries to cover up the fact that they already had a baby and gets the servants to cover for him. The father has a (wife? Mistress?), Chrysis, who is from Samos…Samos was known for being a hotbed of prostitution. Chrysis got pregnant before her man left on this trip, and he had ordered her to lose the child. She miscarries, so problem solved. But then in order to cover for her step son having a child out of wedlock, she volunteers to take their child and take care of it. Her man thinks she disobeyed him but she claims that she just found the child in the wild.
So the son has his plan all in place…his stepmother is covering for him, so hopefully no one will find out that he got his girlfriend knocked up out of wedlock, so now if he can just convince his dad and father in law to let them get married right away, then the deed can be done before anyone is the wiser. (The girls father likewise starts off deceiver because he went on the long business trip with the boys father.)
Of course it backfires and they find out and it looks like all will be lost, but then there’s a reversal at the end and it ends happily.
None of this description conveys the comedic ways in which everything is delivered, but it is quite funny even in translation.
There are lots of well put saying as well; these plays are not as poetic as say Aeschylus, but there are lots of proverbial expressions that were coined by Menander and then quoted by others: in many ways he was a shaper of the culture.
There’s also a recurring theme throughout of these slaves getting put into terrible untenable situations, double binds through no fault of their own. I wonder if Menander was slyly pointing out how unfair and injust that slavery is? I’m not sure. But I get the feeling he may have been a forward thinker for his time.
The Arbitration
A man is cross with his wife because when he comes home, he finds out from a slave that she got pregnant while he was gone and then gave birth. He feels ill used by his wife, goes and sleeps at a neighbor’s house and hires a prostitute to hang out with him. Meanwhile, a shepherd discovers a child that was left in the wilderness to die, complete with a ring. That shepherd is apprehended by the servant of the aforementioned man, who recognizes his master’s ring. The servant brings the child and the ring back to his master’s house but is afraid to tell him. Finally, the prostitute puts it all together and gets the man to admit that he took advantage of a woman at a recent festival. The prostitute recognizes the woman—she is the man’s very wife. The two are reconciled. It’s basically the plot of the Piña Colada song.
The prostitute also gets a happy ending because she gets pursued by the man’s friend that he’s been staying with, and can finally stop having to resort to prostitution to get by. Very nice.
The Shield
A man goes off to war, hoping to come back with enough winnings so that his sister can have a good dowry. He goes with his faithful servant, but his servant comes back with a sad tale. He was separated from his master during a crucial battle. He found his masters bloated corpse with his shield next to it. He has come home with the shield alone, which his master spent so much time taking care of, but which failed to take care of him.
Of course, it’s revealed that his master didn’t actually die but got his gear mixed up with someone else, and because the corpses were swollen his servant couldn’t tell the difference.
His surprise return is instrumental in overturning the machinations of a dastardly neighbor Smikrenes (what a name) who wants to force a marriage upon a girl many years his junior just so he can get his greedy hands on that dowry. This would be particularly tragic since she was just about to marry a young man that she actually loves. Comedically, they trick Smikrenes into thinking that someone else has died and that his daughter (who has an even larger dowry) is up for grabs. At the end, both “dead” people are revealed to not be dead, the girl gets to marry who she pleases, and Smikrenes learns his lesson.
The rest of the plays have so many missing parts that the reconstructions of the plot are very speculative or not even possible.
Is this worth reading?
I think so. You get a completely different view of Greek life, you can learn a lot about comedy, learn what day to day normal life was like, and also I found Menander championing slaves and prostitutes and other people who society deems “lesser” to be refreshing.
The main thing I’m sad about is that we don’t have more complete plays by him, which really detracts from this being as good as it could, though obviously that’s not due to any fault of the translators or anyone else.
Notes on scholarship
Why have you never heard of Menander? Unlike the other great Greek playwrights he composed comedies, not tragedies, and this may be part of why he wasn’t held in as high regard—despite all of those quotations, he only won the title in the athenian drama festivals eight times out of those 100 plays. Nevertheless there is no denying his genius at composing comedic plots, at developing lively characters, and at crafting memorable lines. But you’ve never heard of him because unlike Sophocles or Euripides or Aeschylus, we don’t have a bunch of his surviving texts.
What we do have is one play that is almost complete and several plays that have large missing pieces and then tons of fragments and quotations. In recent years a lot more of his work has been discovered, and this text is the first time for much of the new discoveries to be captured in a solid translation and made accessible.
This book is organized helpfully, starting with the most complete plays and going from there with fragments at the end. I found the first few plays still pretty enjoyable because even when there are major pieces missing, the translator provides their best guess summary of what probably happened in that section based on inference, so the plot is still quite comprehensible. The fragments at the end are less interesting.
September 10, 2022
প্রাচীন গ্রীক কমেডি নাটকগুলোকে বিষয়বস্তু, নাটকের স্বর, এবং সময়কাল অনুযায়ী ৩টি ভাগে ভাগ করেছেন পণ্ডিতেরাঃ ওল্ড কমেডি, মিডল কমেডি, এবং নিউ কমেডি। ওল্ড কমেডি এবং নিউ কমেডির মাঝে সময়ের পার্থক্য মেরেকেটে ২শ বছরের মতো। আজ থেকে প্রায় আড়াই হাজার বছর আগের গ্রীসে মূলতঃ কিছু রাজনৈতিক পরিবর্তনের হাত ধরেই প্রাচীন গ্রীক কমেডি নাটকের এই পরিবর্তনগুলো আসে। ওল্ড কমেডি লেখার চল যখন ছিলো, সেই খ্রীষ্টপূর্ব ৫ম শতকে পেলোপনেজিয়ান যুদ্ধের অবসান ঘটে; এথেন্স ও স্পার্টার মাঝে ২৭ বছর ধরে চলা এ যুদ্ধে এথেন্স পরাজিত হয়, যার ফলে এথেন্সে চর্চিত গণতন্ত্র বেশ অনেকটাই শেকলবদ্ধ হয়ে পড়ে। ওল্ড কমেডির অন্যতম বিশেষত্ব ছিলো ব্যক্তি আক্রমণ, যেটি পরবর্তী সময়ের নাটকে সেভাবে আর দেখা যায় না। ওল্ড কমেডি ঘরানার সবচেয়ে জাঁদরেল নাট্যকার হিসেবে আমরা আজ অ্যারিস্টোফেনেস-এর নাম জানি, যিনি সক্রেটিসকে ব্যঙ্গ করে ভাঁড়ামি-সর্বস্ব নাটক লিখেছেন, ইউরিপিদেস-এর নাটকের একরকম প্যারোডি সংস্করণ বানিয়েছেন, পেলোপনেজিয়ান যুদ্ধের বিরোধীতা করে হাসির নাটক লিখে রীতিমতো প্রপাগ্যান্ডাও চালিয়েছেন। অ্যারিস্টোফেনেস-এর সক্রেটিসকে নিয়ে লেখা ব্যাঙ্গাত্নক নাটকটিই শেষতক সক্রেটিসের বিচার এবং প্রাণদণ্ডের কারণ হয়ে দাঁড়ায় বলে অনেকে রায় দেন।
পেলোপনেজ-এর যুদ্ধে এথেন্স হেরে যাওয়ার পর ওল্ড কমেডিতে ব্যবহৃত অনেক কৌশলই পরবর্তীতে নাট্যকাররা এড়িয়ে যান তাঁদের নবধারার নাটকে। ব্যক্তিগত আক্রমণ বা সমাজের কোন ব্যক্তিবিশেষকে লক্ষ্য না বানিয়ে এবার তাঁরা মনোনিবেশ করেন বিবিধ সামাজিক বিষয়ের ওপর। এই নাটকগুলো এক একটা জানালার মতো কাজ করে; শার্সিতে চোখ রাখলে নিমিষেই যেন আড়াই হাজার বছর আগের একটা ছবি দেখে ফেলা যায়। তবে সে সময়ের অধিকাংশ, প্রায় ৯০ ভাগ কাজই ধ্বংস হয়ে গেছে এতগুলো বছরের পরিক্রমায়, তাই সে জানালাটা আকারে বেশ ছোটই বলা যায়। পণ্ডিতেরা ‘মিডল কমেডি’ বলে একটি ধারা চিহ্নিত করেছেন বটে, কিন্তু সে সময়ের একটি নাটকও আজকের দিনে পড়তে পারা যায় না। মূলত অ্যারিস্টোফেনেসের পর এবং মেনান্দারের আগ পর্যন্ত সময়টিকে মিডল কমেডির সময় বলে অভিহিত করা হয়। অ্যারিস্টোফেনেস যেমন ওল্ড কমেডির সর্বেসর্বা গুরু, নিউ কমেডির পালের গোদা তেমনি মেনান্দার। সাহিত্যের একটা ধারার মাইলফলকই আজ যিনি হয়ে পড়েছেন, তাঁকে পড়বার লোভ দীর্ঘদিন থেকেই ছিল, অবশেষে সেটা মেটানো গেলো!
মেনান্দার লিখেছিলেন ১০৮টির মতো নাটক, তার মাঝে পূর্ণাঙ্গ পরিসরে মাত্র একটি নাটকই আজ বেঁচে আছে, বাকী নাটকগুলোর কোনটির কয়েক পৃষ্ঠা, কোনটির কয়েক অনুচ্ছেদ, আর কোনটির কয়েক চরণ কেবল টিকে রয়েছে। মেনান্দারের যে একমাত্র নাটকটি আজ টিকে আছে (ডিস্কোলোস), সেটির ছায়ায় প্রাচীন রোমান নাট্যকার প্লটাস ও ফরাসী নাট্যকার মলিয়ের পরবর্তীতে নিজেরা নাটক লিখেছেন। তবে মেনান্দারের প্রভাব শুধু এই দু’জনের মাঝেই থেমে থাকেনি, হালের সময়ে টিভিতে আমরা যে সিচুয়েশনাল কমেডি সিরিজ বা চলচ্চিত্রগুলো দেখি, সেগুলোর বিভিন্ন দৃশ্যের সাথে মেনান্দারের নাটকের দৃশ্যের আশ্চর্য মিল পাওয়া যায়। সিটকমে সচরাচর বিভিন্ন বিভ্রান্তির ঘটনা দেখিয়ে হাসির উদ্রেক ঘটানো হয় (যমজ ভাইদের নিয়ে ভুল বোঝাবুঝি, অপরের স্ত্রীর সাথে কথা বলা নিয়ে বিভ্রান্তি ইত্যাদি)। দর্শক হাসাবার কাজে মেনান্দার এ ‘ডিভাইস’গুলোই বারবার ব্যবহার করেছেন তাঁর নাটকে। যে ধরণের চরিত্রগুলোকে আমরা সিটকমে ঘুরেফিরে দেখতে পাই, যাদের ‘স্টক ক্যারেক্টার’ বলা হয় (অর্থ্যাৎ, লেখক-পরিচালকের আস্তিনের তলায�� স্টকে এমন কিছ চরিত্র মজুদ থাকেই, যখনই সিরিজের গতি ঝুলে যায়, কিংবা হাসির দৃশ্যের প্রয়োজন পড়ে, এ চরিত্ররা আস্তিনের তলা থেকে বেরিয়ে আসে), সেই চতুর মুখরা গৃহপরিচারিকা (টু অ্যান্ড আ হ্যাফ মেন), শ্বাশুড়ী ও কন্যা/ পুত্রবধূর যুগপৎভাবে গর্ভধারণ (ফাদার অফ দ্যা ব্রাইড), বোকা বোকা কথা বলা নায়কের বন্ধু (‘আম্মাজান’ চলচ্চিত্রে মান্নার সহচর ‘নবাব’ চরিত্রটি)-ইত্যাদির উৎস হিসেবে মেনান্দারকেই চিহ্নিত করা যায়।
মেনান্দারের পকেট থেকেই কি তবে এত এত সব ঘাঘু নাট্যকার-চিত্রনাট্যকারদের জন্ম? ব্যাপারটা ঠিক তেমনও নয়। মেনান্দারকে নিউ কমেডির প্রবর্তক বলে আমরা জানি বটে, কিন্তু তিনিও তাঁর পূর্বসুরীদের কাছ থেকে বেশ স্বাস্থ্যকর পরিমাণেই নাকি টুকলিফাই করতেন। কালের গর্ভে পূর্বসুরীদের সেসব লেখা হারিয়ে গেছে, তাই আজ আর জানবার উপায় নেই মেনান্দার আসলে কতটুকু কার কাছ থেকে মেরে দিয়েছেন। তবে একটি ব্যাপার স্পষ্ট হয়ে আসে, আড়াই হাজার বছর আগের প্রাচীন সেই গ্রীক সমাজই সভ্যতার শুরু নয়, এর আরো বহু হাজার হাজার বছর আগেই মানুষ তার সামাজিক জীবনের কাঠামোটি গড়ে নিয়েছিলো, যে ছকে আমরা আজও এই ২০২২ সালের জীবন যাপন করি। মেনান্দারের বেশ কয়েকটি নাটকের প্লটই আবর্তিত হয়েছে বিবাহ-বহির্ভূত ‘অবৈধ সন্তান’কে ঘিরে। সন্তানের বৈধতা/অবৈধতার যে মুখরোচক গপ্পে আমরা আজ মজি, সেটির আবেদন আড়াই হাজার বছর আগেও একইরকমই ছিলো।
মেনান্দার খুব সূক্ষ্মভাবে একরকম প্রপাগ্যান্ডা চালিয়েছেন; বিবাহ-বহির্ভূত সন্তানকে অবহেলা না করা, এবং তাকে স্বীকৃতী দেবার একটি আহবান শুনতে পাওয়া যায় দিব্যি। তবে সে সময়ের সাথে আমাদের সময়ের একটি বড় পার্থক্য রয়েছে; মেনান্দার তাঁর অনেকগুলো নাটকেই ধর্ষণকে কৌতুকের বিষয় বানিয়েছেন, অনেকটা যেমন বিগত দশকগুলোতে সমকামীদের কৌতুকের বিষয় বানিয়ে পাঠক/ দর্শককে হাসাবার চেষ্টা করা হতো। এক সময়ের সামাজিক প্রথার মূল্যায়ণ আরেক সময়ে বসে করা যায় না, সত্যিই, তবে বারবার ধর্ষণ বিষয়ক সংলাপ এবং গল্প পড়াটা আজকের দিনে খুব সুখকর কিছু নয়। এ নাটকগুলোর কোনটিই পূর্ণাঙ্গ আকারে টিকে নেই আগেই বলেছি, ২-৩ পাতা পড়বার পরই সে নাটক শেষ হয়ে গেছে, তাই ধর্ষণের ব্যাপারে মেনান্দারের নিজের দৃষ্টিভঙ্গির পরিচয় খুব একটা পাওয়া যায় না।
প্লুতার্ক মেনান্দারকে খুব উঁচুদরের নাট্যকার বলে গণ্য করতেন, আর অ্যারিস্টোফেনেসকে নাকি ধর্তব্যই মনে করতেন না। প্লেটোর একনিষ্ঠ ভক্ত প্লুতার্ক সক্রেটিসের মৃত্যুর পেছনে প্রচ্ছনভাবে দায়ী অ্যারিস্টোফেনেস-এর ওপর চটে থাকবেন সেটাই স্বাভাবিক। প্লুতার্কের এ মূল্যায়ণ কতটুকু যৌক্তিক সেটি আজকের দিনে নিরুপণ করা অসম্ভব, তবে প্লুতার্ককে আমি ওস্তাদ মান্য করি। হলিউডের চোখা চোখা উইটি সংলাপের আড়ালে মেনান্দার যে লুকিয়ে আছেন সেটি আমি জেনে ফেলেছি এখন, আমার ধারণা প্লুতার্ক এটি দু’হাজার বছর আগেই জেনে বসেছিলেন!
পেলোপনেজ-এর যুদ্ধে এথেন্স হেরে যাওয়ার পর ওল্ড কমেডিতে ব্যবহৃত অনেক কৌশলই পরবর্তীতে নাট্যকাররা এড়িয়ে যান তাঁদের নবধারার নাটকে। ব্যক্তিগত আক্রমণ বা সমাজের কোন ব্যক্তিবিশেষকে লক্ষ্য না বানিয়ে এবার তাঁরা মনোনিবেশ করেন বিবিধ সামাজিক বিষয়ের ওপর। এই নাটকগুলো এক একটা জানালার মতো কাজ করে; শার্সিতে চোখ রাখলে নিমিষেই যেন আড়াই হাজার বছর আগের একটা ছবি দেখে ফেলা যায়। তবে সে সময়ের অধিকাংশ, প্রায় ৯০ ভাগ কাজই ধ্বংস হয়ে গেছে এতগুলো বছরের পরিক্রমায়, তাই সে জানালাটা আকারে বেশ ছোটই বলা যায়। পণ্ডিতেরা ‘মিডল কমেডি’ বলে একটি ধারা চিহ্নিত করেছেন বটে, কিন্তু সে সময়ের একটি নাটকও আজকের দিনে পড়তে পারা যায় না। মূলত অ্যারিস্টোফেনেসের পর এবং মেনান্দারের আগ পর্যন্ত সময়টিকে মিডল কমেডির সময় বলে অভিহিত করা হয়। অ্যারিস্টোফেনেস যেমন ওল্ড কমেডির সর্বেসর্বা গুরু, নিউ কমেডির পালের গোদা তেমনি মেনান্দার। সাহিত্যের একটা ধারার মাইলফলকই আজ যিনি হয়ে পড়েছেন, তাঁকে পড়বার লোভ দীর্ঘদিন থেকেই ছিল, অবশেষে সেটা মেটানো গেলো!
মেনান্দার লিখেছিলেন ১০৮টির মতো নাটক, তার মাঝে পূর্ণাঙ্গ পরিসরে মাত্র একটি নাটকই আজ বেঁচে আছে, বাকী নাটকগুলোর কোনটির কয়েক পৃষ্ঠা, কোনটির কয়েক অনুচ্ছেদ, আর কোনটির কয়েক চরণ কেবল টিকে রয়েছে। মেনান্দারের যে একমাত্র নাটকটি আজ টিকে আছে (ডিস্কোলোস), সেটির ছায়ায় প্রাচীন রোমান নাট্যকার প্লটাস ও ফরাসী নাট্যকার মলিয়ের পরবর্তীতে নিজেরা নাটক লিখেছেন। তবে মেনান্দারের প্রভাব শুধু এই দু’জনের মাঝেই থেমে থাকেনি, হালের সময়ে টিভিতে আমরা যে সিচুয়েশনাল কমেডি সিরিজ বা চলচ্চিত্রগুলো দেখি, সেগুলোর বিভিন্ন দৃশ্যের সাথে মেনান্দারের নাটকের দৃশ্যের আশ্চর্য মিল পাওয়া যায়। সিটকমে সচরাচর বিভিন্ন বিভ্রান্তির ঘটনা দেখিয়ে হাসির উদ্রেক ঘটানো হয় (যমজ ভাইদের নিয়ে ভুল বোঝাবুঝি, অপরের স্ত্রীর সাথে কথা বলা নিয়ে বিভ্রান্তি ইত্যাদি)। দর্শক হাসাবার কাজে মেনান্দার এ ‘ডিভাইস’গুলোই বারবার ব্যবহার করেছেন তাঁর নাটকে। যে ধরণের চরিত্রগুলোকে আমরা সিটকমে ঘুরেফিরে দেখতে পাই, যাদের ‘স্টক ক্যারেক্টার’ বলা হয় (অর্থ্যাৎ, লেখক-পরিচালকের আস্তিনের তলায�� স্টকে এমন কিছ চরিত্র মজুদ থাকেই, যখনই সিরিজের গতি ঝুলে যায়, কিংবা হাসির দৃশ্যের প্রয়োজন পড়ে, এ চরিত্ররা আস্তিনের তলা থেকে বেরিয়ে আসে), সেই চতুর মুখরা গৃহপরিচারিকা (টু অ্যান্ড আ হ্যাফ মেন), শ্বাশুড়ী ও কন্যা/ পুত্রবধূর যুগপৎভাবে গর্ভধারণ (ফাদার অফ দ্যা ব্রাইড), বোকা বোকা কথা বলা নায়কের বন্ধু (‘আম্মাজান’ চলচ্চিত্রে মান্নার সহচর ‘নবাব’ চরিত্রটি)-ইত্যাদির উৎস হিসেবে মেনান্দারকেই চিহ্নিত করা যায়।
মেনান্দারের পকেট থেকেই কি তবে এত এত সব ঘাঘু নাট্যকার-চিত্রনাট্যকারদের জন্ম? ব্যাপারটা ঠিক তেমনও নয়। মেনান্দারকে নিউ কমেডির প্রবর্তক বলে আমরা জানি বটে, কিন্তু তিনিও তাঁর পূর্বসুরীদের কাছ থেকে বেশ স্বাস্থ্যকর পরিমাণেই নাকি টুকলিফাই করতেন। কালের গর্ভে পূর্বসুরীদের সেসব লেখা হারিয়ে গেছে, তাই আজ আর জানবার উপায় নেই মেনান্দার আসলে কতটুকু কার কাছ থেকে মেরে দিয়েছেন। তবে একটি ব্যাপার স্পষ্ট হয়ে আসে, আড়াই হাজার বছর আগের প্রাচীন সেই গ্রীক সমাজই সভ্যতার শুরু নয়, এর আরো বহু হাজার হাজার বছর আগেই মানুষ তার সামাজিক জীবনের কাঠামোটি গড়ে নিয়েছিলো, যে ছকে আমরা আজও এই ২০২২ সালের জীবন যাপন করি। মেনান্দারের বেশ কয়েকটি নাটকের প্লটই আবর্তিত হয়েছে বিবাহ-বহির্ভূত ‘অবৈধ সন্তান’কে ঘিরে। সন্তানের বৈধতা/অবৈধতার যে মুখরোচক গপ্পে আমরা আজ মজি, সেটির আবেদন আড়াই হাজার বছর আগেও একইরকমই ছিলো।
মেনান্দার খুব সূক্ষ্মভাবে একরকম প্রপাগ্যান্ডা চালিয়েছেন; বিবাহ-বহির্ভূত সন্তানকে অবহেলা না করা, এবং তাকে স্বীকৃতী দেবার একটি আহবান শুনতে পাওয়া যায় দিব্যি। তবে সে সময়ের সাথে আমাদের সময়ের একটি বড় পার্থক্য রয়েছে; মেনান্দার তাঁর অনেকগুলো নাটকেই ধর্ষণকে কৌতুকের বিষয় বানিয়েছেন, অনেকটা যেমন বিগত দশকগুলোতে সমকামীদের কৌতুকের বিষয় বানিয়ে পাঠক/ দর্শককে হাসাবার চেষ্টা করা হতো। এক সময়ের সামাজিক প্রথার মূল্যায়ণ আরেক সময়ে বসে করা যায় না, সত্যিই, তবে বারবার ধর্ষণ বিষয়ক সংলাপ এবং গল্প পড়াটা আজকের দিনে খুব সুখকর কিছু নয়। এ নাটকগুলোর কোনটিই পূর্ণাঙ্গ আকারে টিকে নেই আগেই বলেছি, ২-৩ পাতা পড়বার পরই সে নাটক শেষ হয়ে গেছে, তাই ধর্ষণের ব্যাপারে মেনান্দারের নিজের দৃষ্টিভঙ্গির পরিচয় খুব একটা পাওয়া যায় না।
প্লুতার্ক মেনান্দারকে খুব উঁচুদরের নাট্যকার বলে গণ্য করতেন, আর অ্যারিস্টোফেনেসকে নাকি ধর্তব্যই মনে করতেন না। প্লেটোর একনিষ্ঠ ভক্ত প্লুতার্ক সক্রেটিসের মৃত্যুর পেছনে প্রচ্ছনভাবে দায়ী অ্যারিস্টোফেনেস-এর ওপর চটে থাকবেন সেটাই স্বাভাবিক। প্লুতার্কের এ মূল্যায়ণ কতটুকু যৌক্তিক সেটি আজকের দিনে নিরুপণ করা অসম্ভব, তবে প্লুতার্ককে আমি ওস্তাদ মান্য করি। হলিউডের চোখা চোখা উইটি সংলাপের আড়ালে মেনান্দার যে লুকিয়ে আছেন সেটি আমি জেনে ফেলেছি এখন, আমার ধারণা প্লুতার্ক এটি দু’হাজার বছর আগেই জেনে বসেছিলেন!
June 9, 2024
I am reading all the surviving drama of Ancient Greece. I have read all of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Aristophanes so far, and now I have just finished the plays and fragments of Menander, considered by his contemporaries to be the best comedy writer of Ancient Greece. But to be honest, his work isn't very good. True, most of it has been lost and what survives is in tatters, but all the same the remaining texts just aren't funny. They are domestic farces with lots of people going in and out of neighbouring houses and people rushing about trying to get married.
Plutarch said that Menander was a genius and that Aristophanes was terrible. But I think it's the other way round. Aristophanes is full of imagination and fantasy and outrageous invention, talking birds and singing frogs and cities in the sky. Menander is just "oh I am in love with a girl but another man who loves her is returning from the wars and I can't marry her because my father is grumpy and I hired a cook who is a greedy fellow and what shall I do now?!"
Not that I enjoy disagreeing with Plutarch! After all, he was there and I am only here, and maybe his aesthetic sense was more attuned to the subtleties of Menander's works than mine is. But I would still much rather see "The Birds" in performance than "Old Cantankerous". Having said this... there is still something worthwhile in these plays, a glimmer of a special quality, but I am unable to put my finger on it and define it more precisely.
Plutarch said that Menander was a genius and that Aristophanes was terrible. But I think it's the other way round. Aristophanes is full of imagination and fantasy and outrageous invention, talking birds and singing frogs and cities in the sky. Menander is just "oh I am in love with a girl but another man who loves her is returning from the wars and I can't marry her because my father is grumpy and I hired a cook who is a greedy fellow and what shall I do now?!"
Not that I enjoy disagreeing with Plutarch! After all, he was there and I am only here, and maybe his aesthetic sense was more attuned to the subtleties of Menander's works than mine is. But I would still much rather see "The Birds" in performance than "Old Cantankerous". Having said this... there is still something worthwhile in these plays, a glimmer of a special quality, but I am unable to put my finger on it and define it more precisely.
May 9, 2024
It's tough to review a collection of plays that are largely just scraps and fragments stitched together by scholars.
What is here is ... meh? I appreciate the position Menander had in the ancient period and the esteem he held, but I don't think modern readers will think much of him. That said, the adaptations (which in many cases is a nice word for "copy/pasted with the VINs filed off" of his work are good, so it stands to reason that there was something here.
My own personal theory is that Menander's style was copied and refined so much over the years that looking back at it now, it no longer seems as fresh or novel as it probably did when it was first presented. Anyway, it's a long-winded way of saying that for all of his historical importance, there isn't a lot here that most people will really enjoy or come back to for repeated reading.
What is here is ... meh? I appreciate the position Menander had in the ancient period and the esteem he held, but I don't think modern readers will think much of him. That said, the adaptations (which in many cases is a nice word for "copy/pasted with the VINs filed off" of his work are good, so it stands to reason that there was something here.
My own personal theory is that Menander's style was copied and refined so much over the years that looking back at it now, it no longer seems as fresh or novel as it probably did when it was first presented. Anyway, it's a long-winded way of saying that for all of his historical importance, there isn't a lot here that most people will really enjoy or come back to for repeated reading.
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February 22, 2019امتیاز دادن به نمایشنامه های مناندر هم مثل امتیاز دادن به سایر ساتیرها و تراژیکمدی ها و کمدی های باقیمونده از دوره باستان کار مسخره ایه. کمدی در ذات خودش تاریخ مصرف داره، چون که کمدی بر اساس معوج کردن نرم های اجتماعی و اخلاقی بنا میشه و این نرم ها یا اصول در هر دوره ای با دوره دیگه تغیر قابل توجهی میکنن. و از طرف دیگه خندوندن هر گروهی از مردم با توسعه فرهنگ سخت تر میشه، جوک ها و شوخی ها تکراری میشن و برای مثال اگه توی دهه بیست میلادی تو سینمای آمریکا برای تماشاگرای اون دوره کوبیدن کیک تو صورت یکی دیگه بی اندازه خنده دار بود برای تماشگر امروز حکم تلاش رقت انگیز و لوس رو داره. بنا براین امتیاز دادن به کمدی دو هزار و سیصد سال پیش نباید بر این اساس باشه که "آیا منو خندوند یا نه؟"، معیاری که حتی در عرض صد سال به طرز قابل توجهی تغییر کرده.
و اگه این رو هم اضافه کنیم که کامل ترین نمایشنامه های باقیمونده از مناندر (به جز دیسکولوس) در بهترین حالت هفتاد و پنج درصد نمایشنامه اصلی هستند همین میتونه علت دیگه ای باشه بر این که امتیاز دادن به چنین مجموعه ای چه قدر مسخره و بی معنیه.
جالب ترین نکته ای که به نظرم رسید مقایسه کمدی جدید مناندر با کمدی قدیم آریستوفانس بود. کمدی قدیم آریستوفانس ژانری بر پایه هجو و انتقاد سیاسی و اجتماعی و ارجاعات فراوان به ادبیات و وقایع روز بنا شده بود، ژانری که بعدها با جاناتان سویفت و امثال مانتی پایتون شناخته شد و در واقع پدربزرگ کمدی های مدرن تر بود. اما کمدی جدید مناندر پدر توعی از کمدی بود که بر بخش عظیمی از این ژانر از پلوتوس و ترنس گرفته تا شکسپیر و از مولیر گرفته تا کمدی های کلاسیک هالیوود تاثیر غیر مستقیم گذاشت. هجو و هزل برنده و اسیدی آریستوفانسی و ارجاعات ادبی و انتقادات سیاسی حذف شدن و با پیام های اخلاقی و کمدی های عاشقانه با پایان خوش جایگزین شدند. اگر آریستوفانس تمام احزای جامعه را مورد انتقاد بی رحمانه قرار میداد، مناندر با پذیرفتن تمام سنت های جامعه خود روایت داستان خود را حول مردمی معمولی با دغدغه هایی معمولی و پیش پا افتاده بنا میکرد. چاپلوسی، قلدری و دورویی و صفات مذموم اخلاقی دیگه مبنای پیچیدگی های درامی بودند که اغلب با "به راه راست هدایت شدن" یا تنبیه کاراکتر دارای صفت اخلاقی مذموم (دقیقا مثل نمایشنامه های مولیر) گره هایش باز میشد. پند های اخلاقی مناندر تا حدی محبوب بودند که گزین گویه های اخلاقی کاراکتر های او (مثل سعدی خودمون) صرب المثل میشدن یا جزوی از کتابچه های آموزشی مدارس بودن.
همگی نمایشنامه های این مجموعه الگویی ثابت دارن. پسری عاشق دختری میشه ولی گره ای در درام به وجود میاد که مانع رسیدن این دو نفر به هم میشه. اغلب این گره ها توسط سوء تفاهم یا عدم شناخت هویت واقعی بوجود میاد. پدری دخترش رو بعد سالها نمیشناسه یا برادری خواهرش رو و با بر ملا شدن این هویت ها گره های درام باز میشن. خوندن ای نمایشنامه ها میتونه اطلاعات جالبی از ریشه کلیشه های ژانر کمدی رومانتیک در دوران باستان بده اما انتظار خندیدن یا لذت بردن از نمایشنامه هایی که الگو هایی به شدت تکرار شده رو بنا کردند و بنابراین تاریخ انقضاشون تموم شده، انتظار زیادیه.
و اگه این رو هم اضافه کنیم که کامل ترین نمایشنامه های باقیمونده از مناندر (به جز دیسکولوس) در بهترین حالت هفتاد و پنج درصد نمایشنامه اصلی هستند همین میتونه علت دیگه ای باشه بر این که امتیاز دادن به چنین مجموعه ای چه قدر مسخره و بی معنیه.
جالب ترین نکته ای که به نظرم رسید مقایسه کمدی جدید مناندر با کمدی قدیم آریستوفانس بود. کمدی قدیم آریستوفانس ژانری بر پایه هجو و انتقاد سیاسی و اجتماعی و ارجاعات فراوان به ادبیات و وقایع روز بنا شده بود، ژانری که بعدها با جاناتان سویفت و امثال مانتی پایتون شناخته شد و در واقع پدربزرگ کمدی های مدرن تر بود. اما کمدی جدید مناندر پدر توعی از کمدی بود که بر بخش عظیمی از این ژانر از پلوتوس و ترنس گرفته تا شکسپیر و از مولیر گرفته تا کمدی های کلاسیک هالیوود تاثیر غیر مستقیم گذاشت. هجو و هزل برنده و اسیدی آریستوفانسی و ارجاعات ادبی و انتقادات سیاسی حذف شدن و با پیام های اخلاقی و کمدی های عاشقانه با پایان خوش جایگزین شدند. اگر آریستوفانس تمام احزای جامعه را مورد انتقاد بی رحمانه قرار میداد، مناندر با پذیرفتن تمام سنت های جامعه خود روایت داستان خود را حول مردمی معمولی با دغدغه هایی معمولی و پیش پا افتاده بنا میکرد. چاپلوسی، قلدری و دورویی و صفات مذموم اخلاقی دیگه مبنای پیچیدگی های درامی بودند که اغلب با "به راه راست هدایت شدن" یا تنبیه کاراکتر دارای صفت اخلاقی مذموم (دقیقا مثل نمایشنامه های مولیر) گره هایش باز میشد. پند های اخلاقی مناندر تا حدی محبوب بودند که گزین گویه های اخلاقی کاراکتر های او (مثل سعدی خودمون) صرب المثل میشدن یا جزوی از کتابچه های آموزشی مدارس بودن.
همگی نمایشنامه های این مجموعه الگویی ثابت دارن. پسری عاشق دختری میشه ولی گره ای در درام به وجود میاد که مانع رسیدن این دو نفر به هم میشه. اغلب این گره ها توسط سوء تفاهم یا عدم شناخت هویت واقعی بوجود میاد. پدری دخترش رو بعد سالها نمیشناسه یا برادری خواهرش رو و با بر ملا شدن این هویت ها گره های درام باز میشن. خوندن ای نمایشنامه ها میتونه اطلاعات جالبی از ریشه کلیشه های ژانر کمدی رومانتیک در دوران باستان بده اما انتظار خندیدن یا لذت بردن از نمایشنامه هایی که الگو هایی به شدت تکرار شده رو بنا کردند و بنابراین تاریخ انقضاشون تموم شده، انتظار زیادیه.
June 17, 2024
Only two of the plays are readable, with the rest fragments that are interesting as a reminder that so much is lost to time.
March 20, 2016
In Old Cantankerous/Dyskolos, Menander has given Western drama not only the structure of just about every comedy for the next two millennia, but also a classic character type: the misanthropic "get off my lawn" old man. (Quite literally! Our first introduction to Knemon in Act One is a description of how he chased some guy off his property by hurling stones, clods of dirt, and rotten fruit. He then goes on to kick everyone off his damn lawn. I kinda love the guy.) On every page we see material that would influence everything from Molière's work to Father of the Bride. If this seems "formulaic," as others have claimed in previous reviews, it is only because Menander gave us the formula. Whether he initially cast this mold or (more likely) was adapting from previous lost sources, his work is what survives, and it remains the key link between Aristophanes and later Roman playwrights Plautus and Terence.
The Girl from Samos is the only other play that survives with more than half of the text intact. It's a classic "Who's the baby daddy?" plot, although no one really gives a damn about the child. They're all concerned with their social standing. This would make a wonderful classic Hollywood screwball comedy, but is less memorable than Old Cantankerous. The rest of the book contains fragments ranging from plays with half the text missing to plays with only a few lines surviving that might or might not have been penned by Menander. Unless more complete versions of these texts are discovered (which is possible, considering the history of Menander's texts being found on mummies and such), these are only worth skimming.
The Girl from Samos is the only other play that survives with more than half of the text intact. It's a classic "Who's the baby daddy?" plot, although no one really gives a damn about the child. They're all concerned with their social standing. This would make a wonderful classic Hollywood screwball comedy, but is less memorable than Old Cantankerous. The rest of the book contains fragments ranging from plays with half the text missing to plays with only a few lines surviving that might or might not have been penned by Menander. Unless more complete versions of these texts are discovered (which is possible, considering the history of Menander's texts being found on mummies and such), these are only worth skimming.
July 22, 2020
I'm doing a project where I'm discussing each of the surviving Greek plays in a Youtube video (at https://www.youtube.com/c/TheatreofPhil). I've completed my Menander videos, which are linked at the end of each review below. My video about Menander himself is at: https://youtu.be/su3V3NVquwM.
The Bad-Tempered Man (Dyskolos): This is Menander's only play which survives almost in its entirety--maybe 25 lines are missing from a few scattered sections--so it gives us the best sense of his dramaturgy and style. Basically, Dyskolos uses the kind of stock comic characters that would later populate Roman comedy, commedia dell'arte, English renaissance comedy, 19th century melodrama, etc. We have figures like the clever slave/servant, the misanthropic/miserly father of the female beloved, the lovelorn suitor, and so on. Basically, Sostratos is a wealthy young man who falls in love with a girl (who doesn't seem to have a name, bizarrely; she's always referred to as Knemon's daughter or Gorgias' sister) he see while out hunting, but her father Knemon is a fanaticaly misanthrope and hermit who detests having anyone around. Sostratos tries, with the help of Gorgias--Knemon's estranged son--to get the old man to let Sostratos marry the girl. When a servant drops a bucket down the well and then loses a mattock trying trying to retrieve the bucket, Knemon falls in the well trying to get them out himself. Gorgias rescues him and tells Knemon that Sostratos was key to the rescue, though as Sostratos has already told the audience he basically just stood around staring at the girl. Moved more by Gorgias' willingness to help despite all the rotten things Knemon had done to him, the old man puts Gorgias in charge of the farm and of finding a husband for the daughter, so Gorgias agrees to let Sostratos marry her, while Sostratos convinces his own father that Gorgias should marry Sostratos' sister. The play ends with two servants, Getas the slave and Sikon the cook, harassing the wet, injured Knemon until he agrees to go to the party they're having to sacrifice to the god Pan, even though Knemon just wants to be left alone.
https://youtu.be/wfJ0MBqX1iE
The Girl from Samos (Samia): This is a great example of a standard five act play, a genre that doesn't really seem to predate Menander. The plot revolves around Moschion, who wants to marry his neighbor's daughter Plangon because they've had a baby together while their fathers were away. However, they don't want people to know that it was their baby, so Chrysis (Demeas' mistress/courtesan--Demeas is Moschion's adoptive father) is raising the infant in place of her and Demeas' baby that died (Demeas didn't know about that baby either). The first act basically sets the stage for these circumstance, and ends with Moschion planning how to convince his father to let him marry Plangon. In the second act, the plot is moved forward as Demeas and Plangon's father return, planning to have their children marry. Moschion agrees and asks to have the wedding as soon as possible. Demeas also isn't pleased that Chrysis has a baby, but he agrees to keep her as his mistress. However, in the third act, Demeas learns that the baby is Moschion's, and he mistakenly assumes that Moschion and Chrysis had an affair, at which point he throws Chrysis out of the house and Plangon's father takes her in. Then in act four Plangon's father learns Demeas' suspicion that Moschion had sex with his father's mistress, and he drives Chrysis from his house. Meanwhile, Moschion reveals to his own father what really happened and Demeas takes Chrysis back, but when Plangon's father learns that it's his daughter's child he is outraged. Finally he is calmed down and everyone agrees to go through with the marriage. Then, at the beginning of the fifth act, Moschion realizes how insulting it is that his father thought he had sex with Chrysis, and he resolves to get even by pretending he's going to run away and join the army, whereupon both fathers prevail upon him to stay and the play ends with Moschion and Plangon's wedding.
https://youtu.be/J8xoPPCf9w4
The Arbitration (Epitrepontes): This play is really fragmented, so it's difficult to actually get a good sense of Menander's writing because so much of this is either guesswork, reconstruction, or summary of what the editors think must have happened in a particular portion. But basically the story runs on the kinds of misrecognitions and mistaken identities that form such a central part of the comic repertoire up through the present. Pamphile had a baby about four months after her marriage to Charisios, which she left outside to die to try and hide the baby. However, Charisios was told by a servant about the baby, so he moved in with his friend Chairestratos and took up with a harp-girl from the brothel named Habrotonon. Smikrenes, Pamphile's father, was understandably upset about his daughter being abandoned, and he basically spends the whole play trying to get her dowry back and take her home. Meanwhile, the baby has been picked up by a shepherd, who then gives the baby to a charcoal burner who works for Chairestratos, but the shepherd tries to keep the jewelry that was left with the baby. The charcoal burner demands the jewelry, and they get Smikrenes to arbitrate the dispute--none of them realize that Smikrenes is the baby's grandfather. Smikrenes is persuaded by the charcoal burner that the jewelry may someday help the baby figure out who its family was, and therefore he awards possession of the jewels to the charcoal burner on behalf of the baby. However, Charisios' servant sees the charcoal burner with his master's ring and thereupon they determine to figure out what relation the baby is to Charisios. Habrotonon comes on, and she realizes that Charisios must have given the ring to a girl he raped at a festival several months before he got married, because she remembers that one of the girls was raped, but she doesn't remember who. So Habrotonon concocts a ruse to confirm her suspicions--namely, that she's going to pretend she was raped and it was her baby in order to confirm that Charisios is the father, then she's going to find the real mother. Shortly after confirming Charisios as the dad, Pamphile happens to be outside and recognizes one of the jewels that Habrotonon has with the baby, at which point they confirm that she was the mother, and Charisios was the one who raped her, thereby fathering their baby. The upshot of this is that it's a happy ending (I guess, though it's pretty fucked up) because Charisios now returns to his wife/rape victim and they all live happily ever after.
https://youtu.be/MQScanEOrAU
The Shield (Aspis): Slightly more than half of this play is missing, which makes it pretty hard to really appreciate as a work of art. The plot is largely dependent on all of the characters thinking this young man is dead in a foreign military campaign, so a miserly uncle tries to marry the dead man's sister in order to inherit his war loot. However, the sister is already engaged to another uncle's son, so the miser tries to break up that wedding. With the help of a cunning slave (a stock figure in New Comedy) the good uncle and his son come up with a scheme to pretend that the good uncle is dying, so the miser will try to marry his daughter and therefore inherit the larger fortune of the good uncle, thereby leaving the sister free to marry the man she was originally betrothed to. However, the supposedly dead man shows back up, claims his fortune and invalidates the miser's plan to inherit it through marriage. The not-dead man marries the good uncle's daughter, while the good uncle's son marries the not-dead man's sister. They all end up rich, married, and happy, except the miserly uncle who gets his comeuppance (probably, but virtually the entire fifth act is lost, so it's not clear what exactly happens).
The thing I do find really interesting about Aspis, however, is that virtually the whole play is an example of dramatic irony. After an initial scene where the man's death is reported, Menander gives a delayed Prologue in which the goddess Chance tells us that he actually isn't dead and that he'll be back before the end of the play. So throughout the whole of the play, the audience knows a crucial piece of info that the characters don't know, and we see all of their actions predicated on this gap in their knowledge.
https://youtu.be/DvhSdaDjZmA
The Girl with the Shaven Head (Perikeiromene): Rather like Aspis, this play runs on dramatic irony and misrecognitions, and is so fragmented that it's pretty difficult to read and enjoy. The plot centers around a soldier who throws his mistress out of the house and shaves her head (a big insult in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean) because he thinks she has a lover. The guy the soldier suspects actually does love the girl, but she doesn't have romantic feelings for him because she knows he is her long lost brother from when they were both exposed as babies by their widowed father. Unbeknownst to any of them, their father becomes the girl's friend and tries to get her back together with the soldier. At some point, she shows her father the tokens she was given when he abandoned them, and they realize he's her dad. The brother, overhearing this conversation, has his suspicions confirmed that she is his sister, and he is reunited with them. Then they effect the reconciliation between the girl and the soldier.
What's interesting about this play, as opposed to the other fragmented texts I've reviewed here, is that here the middle section of each act survives, but the beginnings and ends are lost. With most of them, either the opening or the ending of the play is largely intact, but here there are just fragments of each act.
https://youtu.be/bAwdi5xkemg
The rest of the plays are mostly lost, with less than about 40% surviving, so I am not going to review them all.
The Bad-Tempered Man (Dyskolos): This is Menander's only play which survives almost in its entirety--maybe 25 lines are missing from a few scattered sections--so it gives us the best sense of his dramaturgy and style. Basically, Dyskolos uses the kind of stock comic characters that would later populate Roman comedy, commedia dell'arte, English renaissance comedy, 19th century melodrama, etc. We have figures like the clever slave/servant, the misanthropic/miserly father of the female beloved, the lovelorn suitor, and so on. Basically, Sostratos is a wealthy young man who falls in love with a girl (who doesn't seem to have a name, bizarrely; she's always referred to as Knemon's daughter or Gorgias' sister) he see while out hunting, but her father Knemon is a fanaticaly misanthrope and hermit who detests having anyone around. Sostratos tries, with the help of Gorgias--Knemon's estranged son--to get the old man to let Sostratos marry the girl. When a servant drops a bucket down the well and then loses a mattock trying trying to retrieve the bucket, Knemon falls in the well trying to get them out himself. Gorgias rescues him and tells Knemon that Sostratos was key to the rescue, though as Sostratos has already told the audience he basically just stood around staring at the girl. Moved more by Gorgias' willingness to help despite all the rotten things Knemon had done to him, the old man puts Gorgias in charge of the farm and of finding a husband for the daughter, so Gorgias agrees to let Sostratos marry her, while Sostratos convinces his own father that Gorgias should marry Sostratos' sister. The play ends with two servants, Getas the slave and Sikon the cook, harassing the wet, injured Knemon until he agrees to go to the party they're having to sacrifice to the god Pan, even though Knemon just wants to be left alone.
https://youtu.be/wfJ0MBqX1iE
The Girl from Samos (Samia): This is a great example of a standard five act play, a genre that doesn't really seem to predate Menander. The plot revolves around Moschion, who wants to marry his neighbor's daughter Plangon because they've had a baby together while their fathers were away. However, they don't want people to know that it was their baby, so Chrysis (Demeas' mistress/courtesan--Demeas is Moschion's adoptive father) is raising the infant in place of her and Demeas' baby that died (Demeas didn't know about that baby either). The first act basically sets the stage for these circumstance, and ends with Moschion planning how to convince his father to let him marry Plangon. In the second act, the plot is moved forward as Demeas and Plangon's father return, planning to have their children marry. Moschion agrees and asks to have the wedding as soon as possible. Demeas also isn't pleased that Chrysis has a baby, but he agrees to keep her as his mistress. However, in the third act, Demeas learns that the baby is Moschion's, and he mistakenly assumes that Moschion and Chrysis had an affair, at which point he throws Chrysis out of the house and Plangon's father takes her in. Then in act four Plangon's father learns Demeas' suspicion that Moschion had sex with his father's mistress, and he drives Chrysis from his house. Meanwhile, Moschion reveals to his own father what really happened and Demeas takes Chrysis back, but when Plangon's father learns that it's his daughter's child he is outraged. Finally he is calmed down and everyone agrees to go through with the marriage. Then, at the beginning of the fifth act, Moschion realizes how insulting it is that his father thought he had sex with Chrysis, and he resolves to get even by pretending he's going to run away and join the army, whereupon both fathers prevail upon him to stay and the play ends with Moschion and Plangon's wedding.
https://youtu.be/J8xoPPCf9w4
The Arbitration (Epitrepontes): This play is really fragmented, so it's difficult to actually get a good sense of Menander's writing because so much of this is either guesswork, reconstruction, or summary of what the editors think must have happened in a particular portion. But basically the story runs on the kinds of misrecognitions and mistaken identities that form such a central part of the comic repertoire up through the present. Pamphile had a baby about four months after her marriage to Charisios, which she left outside to die to try and hide the baby. However, Charisios was told by a servant about the baby, so he moved in with his friend Chairestratos and took up with a harp-girl from the brothel named Habrotonon. Smikrenes, Pamphile's father, was understandably upset about his daughter being abandoned, and he basically spends the whole play trying to get her dowry back and take her home. Meanwhile, the baby has been picked up by a shepherd, who then gives the baby to a charcoal burner who works for Chairestratos, but the shepherd tries to keep the jewelry that was left with the baby. The charcoal burner demands the jewelry, and they get Smikrenes to arbitrate the dispute--none of them realize that Smikrenes is the baby's grandfather. Smikrenes is persuaded by the charcoal burner that the jewelry may someday help the baby figure out who its family was, and therefore he awards possession of the jewels to the charcoal burner on behalf of the baby. However, Charisios' servant sees the charcoal burner with his master's ring and thereupon they determine to figure out what relation the baby is to Charisios. Habrotonon comes on, and she realizes that Charisios must have given the ring to a girl he raped at a festival several months before he got married, because she remembers that one of the girls was raped, but she doesn't remember who. So Habrotonon concocts a ruse to confirm her suspicions--namely, that she's going to pretend she was raped and it was her baby in order to confirm that Charisios is the father, then she's going to find the real mother. Shortly after confirming Charisios as the dad, Pamphile happens to be outside and recognizes one of the jewels that Habrotonon has with the baby, at which point they confirm that she was the mother, and Charisios was the one who raped her, thereby fathering their baby. The upshot of this is that it's a happy ending (I guess, though it's pretty fucked up) because Charisios now returns to his wife/rape victim and they all live happily ever after.
https://youtu.be/MQScanEOrAU
The Shield (Aspis): Slightly more than half of this play is missing, which makes it pretty hard to really appreciate as a work of art. The plot is largely dependent on all of the characters thinking this young man is dead in a foreign military campaign, so a miserly uncle tries to marry the dead man's sister in order to inherit his war loot. However, the sister is already engaged to another uncle's son, so the miser tries to break up that wedding. With the help of a cunning slave (a stock figure in New Comedy) the good uncle and his son come up with a scheme to pretend that the good uncle is dying, so the miser will try to marry his daughter and therefore inherit the larger fortune of the good uncle, thereby leaving the sister free to marry the man she was originally betrothed to. However, the supposedly dead man shows back up, claims his fortune and invalidates the miser's plan to inherit it through marriage. The not-dead man marries the good uncle's daughter, while the good uncle's son marries the not-dead man's sister. They all end up rich, married, and happy, except the miserly uncle who gets his comeuppance (probably, but virtually the entire fifth act is lost, so it's not clear what exactly happens).
The thing I do find really interesting about Aspis, however, is that virtually the whole play is an example of dramatic irony. After an initial scene where the man's death is reported, Menander gives a delayed Prologue in which the goddess Chance tells us that he actually isn't dead and that he'll be back before the end of the play. So throughout the whole of the play, the audience knows a crucial piece of info that the characters don't know, and we see all of their actions predicated on this gap in their knowledge.
https://youtu.be/DvhSdaDjZmA
The Girl with the Shaven Head (Perikeiromene): Rather like Aspis, this play runs on dramatic irony and misrecognitions, and is so fragmented that it's pretty difficult to read and enjoy. The plot centers around a soldier who throws his mistress out of the house and shaves her head (a big insult in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean) because he thinks she has a lover. The guy the soldier suspects actually does love the girl, but she doesn't have romantic feelings for him because she knows he is her long lost brother from when they were both exposed as babies by their widowed father. Unbeknownst to any of them, their father becomes the girl's friend and tries to get her back together with the soldier. At some point, she shows her father the tokens she was given when he abandoned them, and they realize he's her dad. The brother, overhearing this conversation, has his suspicions confirmed that she is his sister, and he is reunited with them. Then they effect the reconciliation between the girl and the soldier.
What's interesting about this play, as opposed to the other fragmented texts I've reviewed here, is that here the middle section of each act survives, but the beginnings and ends are lost. With most of them, either the opening or the ending of the play is largely intact, but here there are just fragments of each act.
https://youtu.be/bAwdi5xkemg
The rest of the plays are mostly lost, with less than about 40% surviving, so I am not going to review them all.
June 20, 2025
The sole comic playwrights that have survived from Ancient Greece are Aristophanes and Menander. In the case of the former, this is a great triumph of careful preservation and cultural appreciation, in the case of the latter, it's... fine, I suppose?
Aristophanes' comedy is no-holds-barred exuberance, whereas Menander's is fairly straightforward and trope-driven. Aristophanes can occasionally be infuriating for the modern reader with his copious allusions to god-knows-what-ciphers, whereas Menander's script is neat and allusion-free, but at the same time it is bafflingly boring. We have really ho-hum moralising, absolutely toothless harangues and awkward comic timing, during which tensions are alleviated almost before they were beginning to be felt. This is comedy that lacks bite.
When the most well-preserved examples of his plays are as insipid as this, one can hardly be expected to get excited over the numerous incomplete plays in different stages of fragmentation. One can see plenty of recurring elements: the same names and roles keep popping up, rape seems to be a fairly ordinary plot device (though in a quite casual way), and—here's the sole thing I actually find interesting—the main characters seem to be virtuous and capable of true remorse, not in a masculine Greek way but rather in a more modern, hang-down-your-head-and-ask-for-forgiveness manner.
Apart from a few annoying typos, the edition in itself is pretty splendid. The scholarship is nothing if not impressive, and it is quite intriguing to see how different fragments have been pieced together and how educated guessed have been made (some, for instance, are based on mosaics that depict a scene in a Menander play).
And for the scholarship, these papyri are a treasure trove. For us lovers of Greek texts and biting verbal comedy on the whole, only a smidgen of theoretical interest remains. Lines of succession can be drawn through Plautus and Terence over to Shakespeare etc., but I would much rather focus on the importance of Aristophanes, whose caustic wit is felt even today, compared to this... this... nondescript scribbler and his tepid puppet shows.
Aristophanes' comedy is no-holds-barred exuberance, whereas Menander's is fairly straightforward and trope-driven. Aristophanes can occasionally be infuriating for the modern reader with his copious allusions to god-knows-what-ciphers, whereas Menander's script is neat and allusion-free, but at the same time it is bafflingly boring. We have really ho-hum moralising, absolutely toothless harangues and awkward comic timing, during which tensions are alleviated almost before they were beginning to be felt. This is comedy that lacks bite.
When the most well-preserved examples of his plays are as insipid as this, one can hardly be expected to get excited over the numerous incomplete plays in different stages of fragmentation. One can see plenty of recurring elements: the same names and roles keep popping up, rape seems to be a fairly ordinary plot device (though in a quite casual way), and—here's the sole thing I actually find interesting—the main characters seem to be virtuous and capable of true remorse, not in a masculine Greek way but rather in a more modern, hang-down-your-head-and-ask-for-forgiveness manner.
Apart from a few annoying typos, the edition in itself is pretty splendid. The scholarship is nothing if not impressive, and it is quite intriguing to see how different fragments have been pieced together and how educated guessed have been made (some, for instance, are based on mosaics that depict a scene in a Menander play).
And for the scholarship, these papyri are a treasure trove. For us lovers of Greek texts and biting verbal comedy on the whole, only a smidgen of theoretical interest remains. Lines of succession can be drawn through Plautus and Terence over to Shakespeare etc., but I would much rather focus on the importance of Aristophanes, whose caustic wit is felt even today, compared to this... this... nondescript scribbler and his tepid puppet shows.
April 10, 2025
Before reading this, all I knew of Menander was “Let the die be cast”. It’s fascinating to learn how prolific he was, and tragic to learn how little of his work has survived. I know there have been additional discoveries of fragments since this book was published.
What strikes me most about the surviving work is how contrived the situations are. I think one can draw a line directly from Menander to the 20th century sitcom.
What strikes me most about the surviving work is how contrived the situations are. I think one can draw a line directly from Menander to the 20th century sitcom.
March 19, 2022
It is a sad thing, to read what remains of Menander. The favoured poet of late antiquity has, by almost unfathomable ill-fortune, vanished in time. What remains are various scraps and fragments – maybe three or four plays that near enough completion to be performed, though even they have various compromises. The way this volume is arranged exaggerates this situation profoundly. It begins with Old Cantankerous, the play for which we have the most material, with each subsequent play less and less complete, until by the end we’re left with fragments, and then fragments of dubious authorship. It is much like the decay-art of William Basinski, to see an artwork crumple up; disappear. Menander provides this format an additional aspect: his work is almost entirely composed of stock characters and stock narratives. So it is possible to squeeze from even his most fragmentary works some basic understanding of the scenario: we are seeing the same ‘people’ continually abstracted, losing their specific function as per the relevant play, becoming more and more generic ‘types’. The first Daos we meet is a person; the last is a shape, a dramatic substance who serves a particular purpose in theatrical drama. It is a deconstruction witnessed by error: Menander broken down by nature of his own decomposition. Whether or not I like Menander must, however, remain set on the first few plays. I think they are good (although, unfortunately, Old Cantankerous is probably the least interesting of the ‘surviving’ set); I think in them one can see the seed to all manner of modern comedy. I think less to Shakespeare and other ancient proverbs than I do to Preston Sturges, or P.G. Wodehouse – these artists take from Menander (or rather, his ancestors) that tendency to the precise, particular comedic setup; a web of society arranged so that every part might crash into the other, timed with musical rhythm. Menander here differs from Aristophanes; but more striking in this difference is the moral underbelly that runs through these plays. Though they lean toward ironic diction and situation, they are slung with consistent and edifying moral conclusions. Aristophanes says, or at least would like to be seen saying, that the theatre ought to be used for moral education, but his plays find such joy in contradicting normative morality (before, swiftly, righting all wrongs at journey’s end). He is a sophist who delights in rejecting sophistry – which might well be the peak of sophistic thought. Menander is instead closer to the bone; his characters will proclaim things that relate not to the specific world of Athens (or the distant reaches of Aristophanes’ imagination) but rather the human spirit more generally. He arranges his characters and scenarios – all, to some degree, pre-baked – not merely to unravel them in turn, but also to ensure they discover what is righteous and where all things rightly belong. It is an elegant mode, and one so familiar that its difficult to find much argumentative leverage in discussion. (Even the grisliest Hollywood blockbuster has a great deal more in common with Menander’s comedies than they do any of the old tragedians.) It is comforting, perhaps, that out of so much chaos Menander can discover peace.
July 23, 2011
Bien avant Molière, mais aussi avant Plaute et Térence, Ménandre a été l'auteur de comédie de mœurs plébiscitées par ses contemporains, certains comme Plutarque n'hésitant même pas à la placer juste après Homère. C'est que les pièces de cet élève de Théophraste, successeur d'Aristote au Lycée d'Athène, contiennent tout les éléments propres à donner du plaisir au spectateur, en illustrant les travers de l'habitude, les désordres de l'amour, la rouerie des esclaves. Le malheur est que la plupart d'entre elles sont perdues ou gravement mutilées, tant et si bien qu'il n'est possible de combler les lacunes et de reconstituer la trame que grâce à l'industrieuse érudition de ceux qui en recueillirent patiemment des allusions, des extraits ou des résumés dans l'immense masse de la littérature antique. Certaines pièces, comme les Adelphes, sont très proches des adaptations qu'en fit plus tard Térence. D'autres, comme le bourru, vont rappeler furieusement l'Alceste de Molière. J'ai bien aimé les retours sur eux-mêmes des personnages qui, étant au début la dupe de leurs habitudes, tentent de s'amender après en avoir pris conscience.
October 4, 2024
I only read The Bad-Tempered Man and The Girl From Samos, but I have no desire to finish them. There's just not enough meat on the bones of these plays to provide real substance. It's pure entertainment from a culture that, post-Peloponnesian-war, had largely lost interest in real inquiry; though it's interesting to see how our standard conventions of "clean," formulaic comedy (which Aristophanes certainly was not) stem from Menander and were codified by Plautus.
October 21, 2024
প্রাচীন গ্রীক কমেডি নাটকগুলোকে বিষয়বস্তু, নাটকের স্বর, এবং সময়কাল অনুযায়ী ৩টি ভাগে ভাগ করেছেন পণ্ডিতেরাঃ ওল্ড কমেডি, মিডল কমেডি, এবং নিউ কমেডি। ওল্ড কমেডি এবং নিউ কমেডির মাঝে সময়ের পার্থক্য মেরেকেটে ২শ বছরের মতো। আজ থেকে প্রায় আড়াই হাজার বছর আগের গ্রীসে মূলতঃ কিছু রাজনৈতিক পরিবর্তনের হাত ধরেই প্রাচীন গ্রীক কমেডি নাটকের এই পরিবর্তনগুলো আসে। ওল্ড কমেডি লেখার চল যখন ছিলো, সেই খ্রীষ্টপূর্ব ৫ম শতকে পেলোপনেজিয়ান যুদ্ধের অবসান ঘটে; এথেন্স ও স্পার্টার মাঝে ২৭ বছর ধরে চলা এ যুদ্ধে এথেন্স পরাজিত হয়, যার ফলে এথেন্সে চর্চিত গণতন্ত্র বেশ অনেকটাই শেকলবদ্ধ হয়ে পড়ে। ওল্ড কমেডির অন্যতম বিশেষত্ব ছিলো ব্যক্তি আক্রমণ, যেটি পরবর্তী সময়ের নাটকে সেভাবে আর দেখা যায় না। ওল্ড কমেডি ঘরানার সবচেয়ে জাঁদরেল নাট্যকার হিসেবে আমরা আজ অ্যারিস্টোফেনেস-এর নাম জানি, যিনি সক্রেটিসকে ব্যঙ্গ করে ভাঁড়ামি-সর্বস্ব নাটক লিখেছেন, ইউরিপিদেস-এর নাটকের একরকম প্যারোডি সংস্করণ বানিয়েছেন, পেলোপনেজিয়ান যুদ্ধের বিরোধীতা করে হাসির নাটক লিখে রীতিমতো প্রপাগ্যান্ডাও চালিয়েছেন। অ্যারিস্টোফেনেস-এর সক্রেটিসকে নিয়ে লেখা ব্যাঙ্গাত্নক নাটকটিই শেষতক সক্রেটিসের বিচার এবং প্রাণদণ্ডের কারণ হয়ে দাঁড়ায় বলে অনেকে রায় দেন।
পেলোপনেজ-এর যুদ্ধে এথেন্স হেরে যাওয়ার পর ওল্ড কমেডিতে ব্যবহৃত অনেক কৌশলই পরবর্তীতে নাট্যকাররা এড়িয়ে যান তাঁদের নবধারার নাটকে। ব্যক্তিগত আক্রমণ বা সমাজের কোন ব্যক্তিবিশেষকে লক্ষ্য না বানিয়ে এবার তাঁরা মনোনিবেশ করেন বিবিধ সামাজিক বিষয়ের ওপর। এই নাটকগুলো এক একটা জানালার মতো কাজ করে; শার্সিতে চোখ রাখলে নিমিষেই যেন আড়াই হাজার বছর আগের একটা ছবি দেখে ফেলা যায়। তবে সে সময়ের অধিকাংশ, প্রায় ৯০ ভাগ কাজই ধ্বংস হয়ে গেছে এতগুলো বছরের পরিক্রমায়, তাই সে জানালাটা আকারে বেশ ছোটই বলা যায়। পণ্ডিতেরা ‘মিডল কমেডি’ বলে একটি ধারা চিহ্নিত করেছেন বটে, কিন্তু সে সময়ের একটি নাটকও আজ টিকে নেই। মূলত অ্যারিস্টোফেনেসের পর এবং মেনান্দারের আগ পর্যন্ত সময়টিকে মিডল কমেডির সময় বলে অভিহিত করা হয়। অ্যারিস্টোফেনেস যেমন ওল্ড কমেডির সর্বেসর্বা গুরু, নিউ কমেডির পালের গোদা তেমনি মেনান্দার। সাহিত্যের একটা ধারার মাইলফলকই আজ যিনি হয়ে পড়েছেন, তাঁকে পড়বার লোভ দীর্ঘদিন থেকেই ছিল, অবশেষে সেটা মেটানো গেলো!
মেনান্দার লিখেছিলেন ১০৮টির মতো নাটক, তার মাঝে পূর্ণাঙ্গ পরিসরে মাত্র একটি নাটকই আজ বেঁচে আছে, বাকী নাটকগুলোর কোনটির কয়েক পৃষ্ঠা, কোনটির কয়েক অনুচ্ছেদ, আর কোনটির কয়েক চরণ কেবল টিকে রয়েছে। মেনান্দারের যে একমাত্র নাটকটি আজ টিকে আছে (ডিস্কোলোস), সেটির ছায়ায় প্রাচীন রোমান নাট্যকার প্লটাস ও ফরাসী নাট্যকার মলিয়ের পরবর্তীতে নিজেরা নাটক লিখেছেন। তবে মেনান্দারের প্রভাব শুধু এই দু’জনের মাঝেই থেমে থাকেনি, হালের সময়ে টিভিতে আমরা যে সিচুয়েশনাল কমেডি সিরিজ বা চলচ্চিত্রগুলো দেখি, সেগুলোর বিভিন্ন দৃশ্যের সাথে মেনান্দারের নাটকের দৃশ্যের আশ্চর্য মিল পাওয়া যায়। সিটকমে সচরাচর বিভিন্ন বিভ্রান্তির ঘটনা দেখিয়ে হাসির উদ্রেক ঘটানো হয় (যমজ ভাইদের নিয়ে ভুল বোঝাবুঝি, অপরের স্ত্রীর সাথে কথা বলা নিয়ে বিভ্রান্তি ইত্যাদি)। দর্শক হাসাবার কাজে মেনান্দার এ ‘ডিভাইস’গুলোই বারবার ব্যবহার করেছেন তাঁর নাটকে। যে ধরণের চরিত্রগুলোকে আমরা সিটকমে ঘুরেফিরে দেখতে পাই, যাদের ‘স্টক ক্যারেক্টার’ বলা হয় (অর্থ্যাৎ, লেখক-পরিচালকের আস্তিনের তলায় স্টকে এমন কিছ চরিত্র মজুদ থাকেই, যখনই সিরিজের গতি ঝুলে যায়, কিংবা হাসির দৃশ্যের প্রয়োজন পড়ে, এ চরিত্ররা আস্তিনের তলা থেকে বেরিয়ে আসে), সেই চতুর মুখরা গৃহপরিচারিকা (টু অ্যান্ড আ হ্যাফ মেন), শ্বাশুড়ী ও কন্যা/ পুত্রবধূর যুগপৎভাবে গর্ভধারণ (ফাদার অফ দ্যা ব্রাইড), বোকা বোকা কথা বলা নায়কের বন্ধু (আম্মাজান চলচ্চিত্রে মান্নার সহচর ‘নবাব’ চরিত্রটি)-ইত্যাদির উৎস হিসেবে মেনান্দারকেই চিহ্নিত করা যায়।
মেনান্দারের পকেট থেকেই কি তবে এত এত সব ঘাঘু নাট্যকার-চিত্রনাট্যকারদের জন্ম? ব্যাপারটা ঠিক তেমনও নয়। মেনান্দারকে নিউ কমেডির প্রবর্তক বলে আমরা জানি বটে, কিন্তু তিনিও তাঁর পূর্বসুরীদের কাছ থেকে বেশ স্বাস্থ্যকর পরিমাণেই নাকি টুকলিফাই করতেন। কালের গর্ভে পূর্বসুরীদের সেসব লেখা হারিয়ে গেছে, তাই আজ আর জানবার উপায় নেই মেনান্দার আসলে কতটুকু কার কাছ থেকে মেরে দিয়েছেন। তবে একটি ব্যাপার স্পষ্ট হয়ে আসে, আড়াই হাজার বছর আগের প্রাচীন সেই গ্রীক সমাজই সভ্যতার শুরু নয়, এর আরো বহু হাজার হাজার বছর আগেই মানুষ তার সামাজিক জীবনের কাঠামোটি গড়ে নিয়েছিলো, যে ছকে আমরা আজও এই ২০২২ সালের জীবন যাপন করি। মেনান্দারের বেশ কয়েকটি নাটকের প্লটই আবর্তিত হয়েছে বিবাহ-বহির্ভূত ‘অবৈধ সন্তান’কে ঘিরে। সন্তানের বৈধতা/অবৈধতার যে মুখরোচক গপ্পে আমরা আজ মজি, সেটির আবেদন আড়াই হাজার বছর আগেও একইরকমই ছিলো।
মেনান্দার খুব সূক্ষ্মভাবে একরকম প্রপাগ্যান্ডা চালিয়েছেন; বিবাহ-বহির্ভূত সন্তানকে অবহেলা না করা, এবং তাকে স্বীকৃতী দেবার একটি আহবান শুনতে পাওয়া যায় দিব্যি। তবে সে সময়ের সাথে আমাদের সময়ের একটি বড় পার্থক্য রয়েছে; মেনান্দার তাঁর অনেকগুলো নাটকেই ধর্ষণকে কৌতুকের বিষয় বানিয়েছেন, অনেকটা যেমন বিগত দশকগুলোতে সমকামীদের কৌতুকের বিষয় বানিয়ে পাঠক/ দর্শককে হাসাবার চেষ্টা করা হতো। এক সময়ের সামাজিক প্রথার মূল্যায়ণ আরেক সময়ে বসে করা যায় না, সত্যিই, তবে বারবার ধর্ষণ বিষয়ক সংলাপ এবং গল্প পড়াটা আজকের দিনে খুব সুখকর ক��ছু নয়। এ নাটকগুলোর কোনটিই পূর্ণাঙ্গ আকারে টিকে নেই আগেই বলেছি, ২-৩ পাতা পড়বার পরই সে নাটক শেষ হয়ে গেছে, তাই ধর্ষণের ব্যাপারে মেনান্দারের নিজের দৃষ্টিভঙ্গির পরিচয় খুব একটা পাওয়া যায় না।
প্লুতার্ক মেনান্দারকে খুব উঁচুদরের নাট্যকার বলে গণ্য করতেন, আর অ্যারিস্টোফেনেসকে নাকি ধর্তব্যই মনে করতেন না। প্লেটোর একনিষ্ঠ ভক্ত প্লুতার্ক সক্রেটিসের মৃত্যুর পেছনে প্রচ্ছনভাবে দায়ী অ্যারিস্টোফেনেস-এর ওপর চটে থাকবেন সেটাই স্বাভাবিক। প্লুতার্কের এ মূল্যায়ণ কতটুকু যৌক্তিক সেটি আজকের দিনে নিরুপণ করা অসম্ভব, তবে প্লুতার্ককে আমি ওস্তাদ মান্য করি। হলিউডের চোখা চোখা উইটি সংলাপের আড়ালে মেনান্দার যে লুকিয়ে আছেন সেটি আমি জেনে ফেলেছি এখন, আমার ধারণা প্লুতার্ক এটি দু’হাজার বছর আগেই জেনে বসেছিলেন!
February 19, 2025
Of the works of Menander, there are really two plays that are complete enough to be truly worth reading: that being Dyskolos (The Misanthrope) and the Girl from Samos. This makes it harder to judge Menander's quality, especially as his plays a very much plot driven and are therefore even more deficient as a result of their fragmentary nature.
That being said, it is clear from what we have that Menander's 'New Comedy' is remarkably different from Aristophanes' 'Old Comedy' from only a century prior. Primarily, while Aristophanes focused on political satire, Menander seems to be the progenitor of the romantic situational comedy. This in itself is very insightful into the changing nature of Athens and its decline as a deliberative democracy to neutered Macedonian territory where discussion of politics (aside from a handful of non-controversial statements) was discouraged. However, from this change emerges a new form of comedy that is arguably far more influential than the more famous Aristophanic satire; with adaptations of Menander being made by Plautus, and Plautus inspiring the rest of Western comedy, we can see a strong direct line of transmission from Menander to Shakespeare and most modern comedy programmes.
The other major shift in Menander's writing is the shift in moral tone from Aristophanes. While his works touch on what are, for contemporary audiences, touchy subjects such as sexual assault, Menander is largely devoid of lewd or profane humour. While the particular translation may be relevant here, it appears that Menander's humour is driven entirely by plot and characters and not by one-off quips or jokes. In my judgement, this makes Menander a lot less funny that Aristophanes, and his style of romantic comedy was certainly developed more by later writers which makes his work less appreciative to read. What does make up for this deficiency is Menander's frequent employment of moral aphorisms, which makes his work eminently quotable, including by St Paul in scripture. Following a hundred years of the Plato school of philosophy, Menander can be praised for advancing a moral undertone into the world of theatre, which makes him more edifying.
Over the last hundred years, we have discovered more and more of Menander's work, and hopefully if we find more, then he can be elevated to the station of a great playwright from the ancient world as his work can be more greatly appreciated as it was by his ancient contemporaries with indirectly by later successors. As for now, his work is certainly interesting for understanding the development of Athens, and to collect useful proverbs, but arguably there is too little to discern and appreciate fully as compared to others.
That being said, it is clear from what we have that Menander's 'New Comedy' is remarkably different from Aristophanes' 'Old Comedy' from only a century prior. Primarily, while Aristophanes focused on political satire, Menander seems to be the progenitor of the romantic situational comedy. This in itself is very insightful into the changing nature of Athens and its decline as a deliberative democracy to neutered Macedonian territory where discussion of politics (aside from a handful of non-controversial statements) was discouraged. However, from this change emerges a new form of comedy that is arguably far more influential than the more famous Aristophanic satire; with adaptations of Menander being made by Plautus, and Plautus inspiring the rest of Western comedy, we can see a strong direct line of transmission from Menander to Shakespeare and most modern comedy programmes.
The other major shift in Menander's writing is the shift in moral tone from Aristophanes. While his works touch on what are, for contemporary audiences, touchy subjects such as sexual assault, Menander is largely devoid of lewd or profane humour. While the particular translation may be relevant here, it appears that Menander's humour is driven entirely by plot and characters and not by one-off quips or jokes. In my judgement, this makes Menander a lot less funny that Aristophanes, and his style of romantic comedy was certainly developed more by later writers which makes his work less appreciative to read. What does make up for this deficiency is Menander's frequent employment of moral aphorisms, which makes his work eminently quotable, including by St Paul in scripture. Following a hundred years of the Plato school of philosophy, Menander can be praised for advancing a moral undertone into the world of theatre, which makes him more edifying.
Over the last hundred years, we have discovered more and more of Menander's work, and hopefully if we find more, then he can be elevated to the station of a great playwright from the ancient world as his work can be more greatly appreciated as it was by his ancient contemporaries with indirectly by later successors. As for now, his work is certainly interesting for understanding the development of Athens, and to collect useful proverbs, but arguably there is too little to discern and appreciate fully as compared to others.
March 9, 2022
Athenian dramatist whom ancient critics considered the supreme poet of Greek New Comedy—i.e., the last flowering of Athenian stage comedy. During his life, his success was limited; although he wrote more than 100 plays, he won only eight victories at Athenian dramatic festivals.
Comedy had by his time abandoned public affairs and was concentrating instead on fictitious characters from ordinary life; the role of the chorus was generally confined to the performance of interludes between acts. Actors’ masks were retained but were elaborated to provide for the wider range of characters required by a comedy of manners and helped an audience without playbills to recognize these characters for what they were. Menander, who wrote in a refined Attic, by his time the literary language of the Greek-speaking world, was masterly at presenting such characters as stern fathers, young lovers, greedy demimondaines, intriguing slaves, and others.
Menander’s nicety of touch and skill at comedy in a light vein is clearly evident in the Dyscolus in the character of the gruff misanthrope Knemon, while the subtle clash and contrast of character and ethical principle in such plays as Perikeiromenē (interesting for its sympathetic treatment of the conventionally boastful soldier) and Second Adelphoe constitute perhaps his greatest achievement.
Menander’s works were much adapted by the Roman writers Plautus and Terence, and through them he influenced the development of European comedy from the Renaissance. Their work also supplements much of the lost corpus of his plays, of which no complete text exists, except that of the Dyscolus, first printed in 1958 from some leaves of a papyrus codex acquired in Egypt.
Comedy had by his time abandoned public affairs and was concentrating instead on fictitious characters from ordinary life; the role of the chorus was generally confined to the performance of interludes between acts. Actors’ masks were retained but were elaborated to provide for the wider range of characters required by a comedy of manners and helped an audience without playbills to recognize these characters for what they were. Menander, who wrote in a refined Attic, by his time the literary language of the Greek-speaking world, was masterly at presenting such characters as stern fathers, young lovers, greedy demimondaines, intriguing slaves, and others.
Menander’s nicety of touch and skill at comedy in a light vein is clearly evident in the Dyscolus in the character of the gruff misanthrope Knemon, while the subtle clash and contrast of character and ethical principle in such plays as Perikeiromenē (interesting for its sympathetic treatment of the conventionally boastful soldier) and Second Adelphoe constitute perhaps his greatest achievement.
Menander’s works were much adapted by the Roman writers Plautus and Terence, and through them he influenced the development of European comedy from the Renaissance. Their work also supplements much of the lost corpus of his plays, of which no complete text exists, except that of the Dyscolus, first printed in 1958 from some leaves of a papyrus codex acquired in Egypt.
January 27, 2019
There’s something very pleasing about reading the work of a man that was buried in the earth for such a long time. The work. Obviously Menander is still buried.
A quick word on the editions if you’re interested in reading Menander complete. As far as I am aware there are three: the Loeb, which I’ve not seen, but which I’m sure is as Loeblike as can be; the Penguin Classics, a prose translation; and this one, the OUP, in a verse that’s only mildly irritating as Balme is willing to break metre to preserve the sense. All three were published about the same time and translate the same text. I understand that one or two small pieces of Menander have since been rediscovered, but not enough to change our understanding of him.
My advice would be to read Aristophanes first. I think that if I had read Menander first I would have looked on him as having produced some very primitive plays there weren’t very good by modern standards. But by comparison to Aristophanes he has taken those crazed comic set-pieces and hammered them out into buffoonery and something resembling a plot. How much he is innovating or working within the tradition of New Comedy is of course impossible to know.
I can well imagine the buffoonery of Menander being laughed at by a fair part of the audience, and while the brutality of Aristophanes is not to found here I suspect that something culturally subversive is going on. Menander’s treatment of women and slaves is interesting and I think he may be commenting on their place in society. Difficult to know for sure because of the fragmentary nature of everything.
A quick word on the editions if you’re interested in reading Menander complete. As far as I am aware there are three: the Loeb, which I’ve not seen, but which I’m sure is as Loeblike as can be; the Penguin Classics, a prose translation; and this one, the OUP, in a verse that’s only mildly irritating as Balme is willing to break metre to preserve the sense. All three were published about the same time and translate the same text. I understand that one or two small pieces of Menander have since been rediscovered, but not enough to change our understanding of him.
My advice would be to read Aristophanes first. I think that if I had read Menander first I would have looked on him as having produced some very primitive plays there weren’t very good by modern standards. But by comparison to Aristophanes he has taken those crazed comic set-pieces and hammered them out into buffoonery and something resembling a plot. How much he is innovating or working within the tradition of New Comedy is of course impossible to know.
I can well imagine the buffoonery of Menander being laughed at by a fair part of the audience, and while the brutality of Aristophanes is not to found here I suspect that something culturally subversive is going on. Menander’s treatment of women and slaves is interesting and I think he may be commenting on their place in society. Difficult to know for sure because of the fragmentary nature of everything.
August 29, 2017
Menander’s plays are light comedic material later expanded on by Plautus, Terrence, Shakespeare, Sheridan and others. He is part of the tradition that led to the comedy of manners and later to farce. (But no twins, as far as I know.) They are generally safe – conservative, non-political, and traditional. His works are mildly entertaining, but not required reading except for historians of drama.
Dyskolus/The Grouch/Old Cantankerous *** – This is an entertaining play with the title character being the most interesting person. A young man must win over a misanthrope in order to win the girl he loves. The play plots his conversion from a misanthrope to one grudgedly human.
The Girl from Samos *** – I’m not sure why this is called the Girl from Samos, when the Girl from Samos is not the main character. She’s an important character, but far from the most important. Anyway, this is a farcical drama spinning around the parentage of an infant.
This is a solid collection. The translator does not try to fill in the gaps in dialogue within these many fragments, instead choosing to fill the gaps with estimations of what is missing.
Dyskolus/The Grouch/Old Cantankerous *** – This is an entertaining play with the title character being the most interesting person. A young man must win over a misanthrope in order to win the girl he loves. The play plots his conversion from a misanthrope to one grudgedly human.
The Girl from Samos *** – I’m not sure why this is called the Girl from Samos, when the Girl from Samos is not the main character. She’s an important character, but far from the most important. Anyway, this is a farcical drama spinning around the parentage of an infant.
This is a solid collection. The translator does not try to fill in the gaps in dialogue within these many fragments, instead choosing to fill the gaps with estimations of what is missing.
February 10, 2022
With exception of Old Cantankerous and The Girl from Samos, most of these plays are too fragmented to follow and are better skimmed. But the two relatively intact plays in this collection are worth the read, as they bridge the gap between old Greek comedy and Roman comedy. Menander’s work is less political, bawdy, or fantastic as Aeschylus’, but Norma Miller makes clear in her helpful introduction (which is just as valuable as the plays themselves, in my opinion) that attitudes in Greece had evolved as did the nature of comedy. Comprehending this is essential to understanding the significance of Menander on Greek comedy. His work set a solid foundation for other noteworthy playwrights over the years; you can see how they were influenced down the line by Menander as you read these plays/fragments. But personally I found Aeschylus more enjoyable (and less fragmented—to no fault of Menander). If for nothing else, the discovery of these plays and fragments alone is fascinating: his legendary work was believed to be lost in antiquity, but was randomly discovered in the lining of Egyptian mummy cases in the 20th century. Quite the literary gold mine.
December 10, 2017
Old Cantankerous, the only play we have almost all lines intact of, was a disappointment, as it felt like an immature work, but other plays, though fragmented, presented a MUCh mature and master playwright in control of his craft. Quite frustrated that those really interesting plays (like The Girl from Samos, The Arbitration, The Rape of the Locks, and delightfully promising The Double Deceivers didn't survive the ravages of time in whole and are badly fragmented.
March 1, 2020
Plus élégant que Plaute ou Térence, on reste cependant dans la comédie légère… bien loin de la profondeur d'Aristophane et des tragiques.
L'histoire la plus fascinante est moins le matériel en lui-même que le fait que ces pièces ont été perdu pendant plus d'un millénaire et miraculeusement redécouvertes il y a quelques décennies seulement, grâce aux Papyrus d'Oxyrhynque.
L'histoire la plus fascinante est moins le matériel en lui-même que le fait que ces pièces ont été perdu pendant plus d'un millénaire et miraculeusement redécouvertes il y a quelques décennies seulement, grâce aux Papyrus d'Oxyrhynque.
May 8, 2017
The Bitter Old Man was biting and very funny, but the rest of Menander's works are formulaoc and shrug worthy.
Read
October 4, 2021J'ai seulement lu Le Bourru.
Read
June 4, 2023Read: 'Samia' or 'The Girl From Samos'
July 26, 2024
Nothing groundbreaking for the modern reader, but enjoyable nonetheless.
September 19, 2024
More like meander
September 19, 2024
Disturbingly, as they became more fragmented and disjointed, the plays somehow got better.
July 25, 2025
Mostly fragmented, thus explains why I’m not very amazed by Menander’s meandering theatre. Many plays about drunken soldiers written in a very British vernacular.
Zzz…
Zzz…
October 16, 2025
I definitely enjoyed this more than anything by Aristophanes; it felt a bit more accessible, at least in some way.
October 11, 2009
"THE GROUCH"
In a word, Menander's only full-length extant play "The Grouch" was incredibly formulaic. While Aristophanes' "Old Comedy" was invigorating--bubbling over with comic potential in its topical focus, satirical assault on political figures, and audience provocation typified by the new-found parabasis--"New Comedy" (as embodied in its first patron saint, Menander) was predictable, generic, and essentially unmoored from anything of consequence (i.e. time, place, people, etc.). I totally understand that, following the Greek defeat at the hands of the Spartans at the end of the 5th century BC, Greeks were overwhelmingly dejected; after losing a 20+ year war, the Greeks must have felt that--for all their sophistication in philosophy, law, and the arts--they were a failed people. Consequently, it's also easy to swallow that this nation-state-wide malaise necessitated a major shift in the nature of staged comedy: at that time, an incredibly timely art form, unafraid of questioning state policy. But, following the explosive wit and imagination of Aristophanes' comedies, HOW WAS THIS STUFF POPULAR?
A critic in the Introduction to this play claimed that, for centuries following his death, Menander was as widely known, quoted, and venerated as Shakespeare is today. So, what are we missing here (aside from the hundreds of OTHER plays he wrote)?
In the long-dead playwright's defense, "The Grouch" was written very early in his career. But I can only imagine that the comic potential of this work must have resembled the formula that gave "Seinfeld" so much longevity. Like the NBC comedy, "The Grouch" is truly a play "about nothing."
Concession #2: the Roman playwright isn't given much help by his 20th century translator. If "brevity is the soul of wit," the translator in this case completely undercuts the play's humor by converting the playwright's nimble verse into exhaustive prose. Way WAY too verbose for any of the jokes to land.
On a more positive note, “The Grouch” does offer a variety of unique theatrical traits, which showcase the overarching development of performance theatre since “Old Comedy.” For one, the prologue is highly meta-theatrical in its acknowledgment of Menander as the playwright, the actors as, well... actors, and--funniest of all--the judges and their impending award decision. Also, while 5th century theatre heavily stressed the role of the Chorus, Menander’s New Comedy sparsely integrates Chorus entr’actes—essentially, nothing more than “commercial breaks” in the play’s action.
Why did Menander and his New Comic colleagues downplay the Chorus’ influence? My hypothesis: if the Chorus serves as proxy audience members in the action of the play, perhaps their minimized role in New Comedy is a reflection of playwrights’ growing desire to limit Greek citizens’ engagement with the art form. While 5th century comedy provoked audience members with ethical, spiritual, and political questions (via the parabasis), New Comedy presented a stock romance, meant to entertain without drawing citizen-viewers too much into the mix.
Last note: I wonder if Moliere used “The Grouch” as an inspiration for his “Misanthrope?” Both are Comedies of Manners, though the latter is, well… actually funny.
In a word, Menander's only full-length extant play "The Grouch" was incredibly formulaic. While Aristophanes' "Old Comedy" was invigorating--bubbling over with comic potential in its topical focus, satirical assault on political figures, and audience provocation typified by the new-found parabasis--"New Comedy" (as embodied in its first patron saint, Menander) was predictable, generic, and essentially unmoored from anything of consequence (i.e. time, place, people, etc.). I totally understand that, following the Greek defeat at the hands of the Spartans at the end of the 5th century BC, Greeks were overwhelmingly dejected; after losing a 20+ year war, the Greeks must have felt that--for all their sophistication in philosophy, law, and the arts--they were a failed people. Consequently, it's also easy to swallow that this nation-state-wide malaise necessitated a major shift in the nature of staged comedy: at that time, an incredibly timely art form, unafraid of questioning state policy. But, following the explosive wit and imagination of Aristophanes' comedies, HOW WAS THIS STUFF POPULAR?
A critic in the Introduction to this play claimed that, for centuries following his death, Menander was as widely known, quoted, and venerated as Shakespeare is today. So, what are we missing here (aside from the hundreds of OTHER plays he wrote)?
In the long-dead playwright's defense, "The Grouch" was written very early in his career. But I can only imagine that the comic potential of this work must have resembled the formula that gave "Seinfeld" so much longevity. Like the NBC comedy, "The Grouch" is truly a play "about nothing."
Concession #2: the Roman playwright isn't given much help by his 20th century translator. If "brevity is the soul of wit," the translator in this case completely undercuts the play's humor by converting the playwright's nimble verse into exhaustive prose. Way WAY too verbose for any of the jokes to land.
On a more positive note, “The Grouch” does offer a variety of unique theatrical traits, which showcase the overarching development of performance theatre since “Old Comedy.” For one, the prologue is highly meta-theatrical in its acknowledgment of Menander as the playwright, the actors as, well... actors, and--funniest of all--the judges and their impending award decision. Also, while 5th century theatre heavily stressed the role of the Chorus, Menander’s New Comedy sparsely integrates Chorus entr’actes—essentially, nothing more than “commercial breaks” in the play’s action.
Why did Menander and his New Comic colleagues downplay the Chorus’ influence? My hypothesis: if the Chorus serves as proxy audience members in the action of the play, perhaps their minimized role in New Comedy is a reflection of playwrights’ growing desire to limit Greek citizens’ engagement with the art form. While 5th century comedy provoked audience members with ethical, spiritual, and political questions (via the parabasis), New Comedy presented a stock romance, meant to entertain without drawing citizen-viewers too much into the mix.
Last note: I wonder if Moliere used “The Grouch” as an inspiration for his “Misanthrope?” Both are Comedies of Manners, though the latter is, well… actually funny.
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